The Bilingual Courtroom: Court Interpreters in the Judicial Process

by Susan Berk-Seligson

Book Overview

Drawing on more than one hundred hours of taped recordings of Spanish/English court proceedings in federal, state, and municipal courts-along with extensive psycholinguistic research using translated testimony and mock jurors-Susan Berk-Seligson's seminal book presents a systematic study of court interpreters, and raises some alarming, vitally important concerns: contrary to the assumption that interpreters do not affect the contents of court proceedings,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226043738
• ISBN13: 9780226043739
• Release Date: June 1990
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 307 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Excellent Resource!

Perfect for those who plan to work in a bilingual courtroom. Thanks for the speedy delivery!

My Review

This is an excellent book, has solid research and is very professional. Several times Susan Berk-Seligson (the author) is quoted in other authoritative works on the subject. However, my only critique with this work is how many mistakes there were in the Spanish grammar and renderings in English. For such a professional and high level work, the author, now in at least her second if not third edition still has glaring errors of the simplist type, somewhat embarassing to those of us who truly are bilingual. It's just kind of ironic how the whole point of the book is how important it is to pay attention to minor and many times disregarded elements of speech like register, hedges, false starts, tone and additions in order to faithfully interpret into the Target Language. Yet Susan Berk-Seligson or her editing team has not taken into consideration, in at least two editions, how weak her argument becomes and how much credibility she loses when one considers how blatent and glaring her own mistakes are in several translations in her book. Overall, however, it is a must read for anyone thinking of going into court interpretation.